Preschool Picasso: Yarn

I was excited to do this yarn-themed program because I've seen so many good yarn craft ideas for kids online. I based my crafts on the books I've read and we ended up reading two books, one at the beginning of the program and one after our crafts, because we had a smaller group than usual.

For my first book, we read "Little Owl's Orange Scarf" by Tatyana Feeney. This is one of my go-to books for owls and is about an owl who doesn't like his orange scarf his mommy made him. At the end of the book, Little Owl gets a new scarf that he likes much better.

The other book I ended up reading was "Edmund Unravels" by Andrew Kolb. This story was truly a picture book about yarn. Edmund is a ball of yarn who is looking for adventure, but realizes he misses the familiar.

Our first craft of the program was doing some process art using paint and yarn. The group each had their own cups of paint and yarn dipped inside. Once they stirred up the yarn to get it covered in paint, they put that on their cardstock. They could drag the yarn, dab the yarn, try to make designs with the yarn, but the goal was to try a new way of painting that was creative and unique to each child. These turned out fun!

Our next craft was making an owl just like in our first story, but with yarn weaving. Each preschooler was given a card stock owl body that had small slits cut all around it so that they could weave their yarn around the owl body easily and make patterns any way they like. I kept my craft simple by just weaving the yarn back and forth across, but a few of the kids made awesome checkered patterns.

Other Books:

Extra Yarn Mac Barnett

A Bedtime Yarn Nicola Winstanley

A Friendship Yarn Olga Demidova

The Red Wolf Margaret Shannon

Preschool Picasso: Winter Time

It was so nice to see all my families back for more Preschool Picasso this year. We had a winter theme complete with some real snow on the ground outside. 

After we talked a little bit about winter and the new year and everyone got settled in, we read Snowzilla by Janet Lawler. This is a rhyming picture book about a girl who with some help, builds a gigantic snowman and how the town feels about it. 

After mentioning our youth Tumblr page and asking for suggestions on content and promoting a later storytime, I explained each craft.

We started with some process art paintings. The group created winter scenes using blue and white paint, liquid glue, and Epsom salt. I explained to the group that this craft is very fun and the focus is on creating, not the end of the craft. 

Blue paint is painted onto card stock or other thick paper any way they would like and then white paint is added, making different shades of blue and our winter scene. Once they are finished painting, it's time to add a lot of glue (the kids love this part) and sprinkle Epsom salt on top to make snow. We talked about the different color blues and the texture of the salt. They had a fun time painting and sprinkling their salt onto their art.

After they were done with their process art, we let them dry and it was time to make a snowman like the snowman in our story. We had different shapes, felt scarf pieces, and white and black paint in q-tips to make snowflakes and snowman faces.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!